The Travelers by Chris Pavone Page B

fantastic.”
    “Thanks.”
    “I guess this change has been good for you?”
    She looks away from his accusatory gaze. “It was time, Mal.”
    He nods. “Do you want to hear that I miss you?”
    She doesn’t answer.
    “Well I do.”
    “Mal—”
    He holds up his hand. “But that’s not why I needed to see you tonight.”
    —
    He takes a taxi back across the river. A half-mile from home, he gets out of the cab, and jogs the rest of the way. Malcolm doesn’t particularly want the additional ten minutes of exercise, and his knee is really sore. His goal is visual in a more short-term sense: he needs to work up a credible sweat. Because what he doesn’t want is to be caught by his wife returning from a supposed midnight jog sweat-free. Allison would think he’d been with someone, and Chloe might be whom she’d suspect. Allie is an irrational mess these days. But she’d be halfway correct.
    Malcolm is running against traffic, headlights in his face, horns blaring, lights blinking on bicycles.
    He’s worried about Will. Malcolm had assumed he’d be able to trust Will with no reservations, without needing to worry about Will snooping, or being compromised, or being any type of pain in the ass. That’s why Malcolm hired Will to begin with: to be reliable. But suddenly he’s looking a bit un-.
    Malcolm is also concerned about this new life of Chloe’s. And about Gabriella too—she has had a truly terrible year.
    Plus Malcolm is always concerned about
Travelers
—the day-to-day challenges of putting out a magazine, of managing existing staff and hiring new, of precarious finances. And of course he’s worried about the secrets.
    It’s all so tenuous, always so close to falling apart.
    Around the next corner is the front entrance to his building, but he keeps jogging past it.
    When he and Allison were apartment-hunting last year, one of Malcolm’s few requirements—unspoken—was that their new home offer two different exits, on two different streets. He had a hard time investigating this while touring apartments with the broker. “Is there a garage? I’d like to see it,” he’d said. “The laundry room is in the basement? Can we check that out?” Allie had looked at him like he’d lost his marbles.
    Small buildings were out of the question, unless they were on a corner lot. Eventually Malcolm had to claim to Allie that he wanted to live in a big building, a starchitect skyscraper with twenty-four-hour doormen and a live-in super and a garage and, you know,
amenities.
In truth the only amenity he wanted was a back entrance on the next street.
    He needed a way to sneak out, and a way to sneak back in, which is exactly what he does now, drenched with sweat to mask his secrets.

BUENOS AIRES
    Will suffers through a deeply disturbing tango show, a nightmare interlude in a David Lynch movie. As an antidote he heads to a karaoke bar, which is one of the things he does to amuse himself at eleven at night, in other countries, alone.
    He sings “What a Good Boy.” His college band once warmed up for Barenaked Ladies in a little club in Wicker Park, a lucky gig to have landed, back when Will vaguely imagined that music was what he’d do. The band imploded due to a love triangle, nothing to do with talent or ambition, just the predictable entanglements of youth. Six months later Will had a new girlfriend, and a busier position on the school newspaper.
    He steps off the small stage, and notices a text message from someone he doesn’t know, an unfamiliar local number, giving an address.
Who’s this?
Will replies.
    Luis! Esteban’s cousin!
    Esteban is the hotel concierge. Will gets the distinct feeling that Esteban is an avid procurer of whatever it is that his guests could want. Will wonders what exactly Esteban has anticipated Will wants. But the club is nearby, and as a rule Will really does say yes to everything. It’s not a come-on line he uses on beautiful Australians.
    Will picks his way around the